Grants and Writing Resources for Concordia University Montreal
Five students from Concordia's Master's in Public Policy and Public Administration program won the Robert Shepherd Prize for Best Presentation at the National Public Administration Case Competition, Concordia reported in March 2026. The case asked teams to set Canada's most urgent national security priorities for the next four years. They had 10 days to prepare and 30 minutes before the judges. It was Concordia's second straight top award, a first in the event's 15-year history.
Research Money for Undergraduates
The NSERC Undergraduate Student Research Award pays for a summer of full-time work in a faculty member's natural sciences or engineering lab. For summer 2026 the award was $6,000 from NSERC, and the supervisor added a $2,270 supplement. Students need Canadian citizenship or permanent residence, a cumulative GPA of at least 3.00 and one completed year of university. A student can hold up to three of these awards over a university career.
Research abroad has separate funding. Concordia International handles the Quebec Mobility Bursary, Erasmus+ grants and the Mitacs Globalink Research Award, which sends senior undergraduates and graduate students to universities outside Canada for research projects. The mobility funding page lists each program.
Graduate Funding and Conference Travel
Concordia graduate students won 213 external scholarships and fellowships in 2025-26: 106 from the Fonds de recherche du Québec, 96 from the federal Tri-Agency councils and 11 major or specific awards. Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships appear on the 2025-26 list. The Graduate Awards Office helps with those applications through one-on-one advising, draft reviews and peer review sessions.
Inside the university, the Volt-Age electrification program gives PhD students a $35,000 annual scholarship and master's students $22,000 a year for two years. Thesis-based master's applicants from outside Quebec are considered at admission for the Out of Province Award, worth about $10,000 over the program. To present at a major conference or a juried exposition, thesis students apply for the Conference and Exposition Allowance: $750 for a national event, $1,000 for an international one, and up to $500 in registration fees for a virtual or Montreal-area conference.
Explaining Research to the Public
Doctoral and research master's students compete in 3MT and Ma thèse en 180 secondes, where each speaker gets three minutes and one slide. The French competition is for doctoral students. Entrants first complete GradProSkills training, the audience votes for a People's Choice Award, and two students go on to represent Concordia at the regional and national rounds.
The Public Scholars program began in 2016 with the Montreal Gazette. Each year a cohort of PhD students trains to communicate its research through outlets such as The Conversation, Le Devoir and the Gazette. The 2025-26 cohort has 10 doctoral students, from chemical engineering to social and cultural analysis.
Writing Help and Thesis Submission
The Writing Centre is free and works in English or French. Peer tutors called writing assistants hold 50-minute appointments in person or online and 25-minute drop-in sessions. For written feedback, a student sends a draft, and an assistant reviews it for about an hour and replies by email.
The School of Graduate Studies runs separate writing support for thesis writers. Thesis Boost is a three-day event held twice a year with long writing blocks and workshops. Mini-Boost is a one-day version held five times a year, and student-led co-working groups meet online or in person.
The thesis submission process sets the formatting rules, including abstracts of up to 250 words for a master's thesis and 350 for a doctoral one. The final copy goes in as a PDF/A file to Spectrum, Concordia's open-access research repository, and the Thesis Office reviews each final submission.
Before a thesis goes to Spectrum, our editors can give it a final edit for grammar, consistency and format. See our Concordia University Montreal dissertation and thesis editing page, or write to editors@editorsforstudents.com.
From Our Writing Guides
Compiled by James Peterson Brown, PhD, Managing Editor of Editors For Students. Links checked October 2026.
Editors For Students is an independent editorial service and is not affiliated with Concordia University, and your faculty may endorse our services individually. We look forward to helping you bring your Concordia writing to its strongest, submission-ready form.